


i see you (finally)

by ilovenutella99



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Speculation, just your typical reunion fic, lots of hugs, madi and bell are friends, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 12:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13927602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilovenutella99/pseuds/ilovenutella99
Summary: Bellamy cannot believe his luck. He's back on the ground for less than ten minutes before he gets a bag shoved over his head and he gets shoved into a cell."Hey! Let go of me!" An unfamiliar voice shouts, before the person is shoved into the cell too and the door locks again. The being jumps up quickly, slamming her shoulder into the door. "Let me out!" Bellamy swallows and looks at her, realizing that she's a child. Can't be older than ten.





	i see you (finally)

**Author's Note:**

> so i know that everyone has read about a thousand reunion fics but i had to add to it with one more! hope you enjoy and as usual, i'm still stressed about season 5 but i'm trying to remain positive!

Bellamy cannot believe his luck. He’s back on the ground for less than ten minutes before he gets a bag shoved over his head and he gets shoved into a cell. He supposes it was a bad idea to go looking around the area alone, but in his defense he hadn’t seen trees in six years and he’s spent too much time with Murphy.

He hits the ground with a thud and rips the bag off of his head, looking around at the cell he’s been put in. No way out besides the door that locked after it was shut. He has nothing in his hands, nothing in his pockets. He’s stuck here. At least for the foreseeable future. They’ll realize he’s gone. Someone will, at least.

He tries to edge his hands out of the confinement they that’ve been placed in. Bellamy realizes with a start that he’s being held by a zip tie. A zip tie. They didn’t have these on the ground before. No, these people didn’t come from the bunker. They came from the sky. Bellamy wracks his brain, trying to remember anything about people other than the Ark, but it’s been too long since he’s been in school.

So, he uses the only thing he can think of to get them off: brute strength. Bellamy stands quickly and slams his tied hands into his stomach a couple times. They finally come loose and he grimaces, blinking as the ties fall to the ground. He’s just starting to get his bearings again when the door slides open.

“ _Hey_! Let go of me!” An unfamiliar voice shouts, before the person is shoved into the cell too and the door locks again. The being jumps up quickly, slamming her shoulder into the door. “Let me out!”

Bellamy swallows and looks at her, realizing that she’s a child. Can’t be older than ten. And if she’s demanding to be let out of the cell, that means she didn’t come from these people. That means she must have come from the bunker. She continues to slam on the door and he admits she’s got spunk. It’s going to get her nowhere, but she’s got spunk. “It’s not going to open,” he says, and she spins to face him, her hands held in fists for defense. He holds his up quickly. “It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Who are you?” She spits, her eyes not leaving his. “What are you doing here?”

Bellamy takes another step back from the girl, careful to not seem like a threat. “They captured me too,” he starts carefully, and he watches the girls dark brows come together, “my name is Bellamy.”

Her eyes go a bit wide. “Bellamy?”

He nods, a bit of hope blossoming in his chest. “Do you know that name?”

The girl swallows, and doesn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know. It sounds familiar.”

Bellamy feels his breath come up short. If she knows the name, then she must know someone who knows him. Octavia? Kane? “Did you come from the bunker?”

She doesn’t answer his question, but instead says, “can you get these off of me? They’re hurting.”

He nods and steps forward slowly, watching her eyes follow his every step. She’s apprehensive, and she has every right to be. A random man in a cell with her? Yeah, he’d probably be apprehensive too. Bellamy explains to her what she has to do and she nods, listening intently to every word. And then she does it, without a moment’s hesitation. It doesn’t work the first time, but Bellamy encourages her to try again. She finally gets it off after three tries and flexes her fingers.

The two are quiet for another few seconds as the girl scurries around looking for any possible way to escape. Bellamy knows there’s no way out, but he doesn’t want to make this seem impossible. Their captors have to come back for them at some point. If they locked them up that means they want something. Information, supplies, guns. Bellamy wishes he had a gun right now. They’d be much better off if he had one. But, he hasn’t held a gun in six years, let alone shot one.

“Do you have a gun?” Bellamy raises a brow. “A gun, dummy, do you have it?”

“Do you know how to shoot?” He asks, a bit of humor in his voice. A ten year old is calling him _dummy_. He hasn’t been around enough children to be able to formulate any other response.

The girl nods and starts speaking very quickly, spouting the words out like a fountain. “Yes. My mom taught me. Well, she’s not really my mom but she’s close—” She stops abruptly when she realizes she’s talked too much. But Bellamy’s itching for human interaction, human interaction that isn’t with the same people from space.

“She’s not really your mom?”

She hesitates, but nods. “No. My parents died. She found me, and she’s basically my mom.”

“I’m sorry,” Bellamy says quietly, “about your parents.” The girl shrugs a bit.

“It was a long time ago,” she responds, but then turns and sticks out her hand. “My name’s Madi.”

Bellamy gives her a smile and shakes her hand a bit. “Nice to meet you, Madi. Obviously not under the best terms but—” he gets a smile out of her and he grins. “Are you from the bunker?

Again, she avoids the question, but Bellamy can’t blame her. He’s a stranger. If she’s from the bunker, then she was probably taught to be cautious around strangers. That’s what they would have taught her. “We have to find a way out of here.”

Bellamy sighs and sits on the ground, stretching his legs out. “I don’t think there’s a way out of here. The only way in or out is the door, and they’re only opening it to put someone in here.

“So we wait for someone to come in and we fight our way out!” Madi’s got guts, he’ll give her that. It’s getting them nowhere, but.

“Two of us, who knows how many of them. I had a bag over my head when I got thrown in here. We don’t know how many there are,” he supplies and she turns sharply, a look of annoyance on her face so familiar that Bellamy has to blink a few times.

“I didn’t know you were a quitter.”

Now, he raises a brow. “Ah, so you do know me.”

Madi only shrugs, turning back to inspect the door. “I’ve heard stories.”

“I hope good ones.” She nods, only adding to his confusion.

“Only good ones.” He raises a brow but she doesn’t give him any more information. He studies her as she goes around the room again looking at the cell. It doesn’t look like Madi has spent much time underground. She has a healthy glow to her that can only come from being in the sun. It makes him wonder if the bunker’s been open longer than they thought. No one could spend five years underground and still look this healthy. She looks like she’s been well-fed, but he remembers that if her mom knows how to shoot then she can probably hunt. If Madi knows how to shoot then Madi can probably hunt too. This is all if the bunker has been opened and people got out a long time ago. Part of him knows that’s not the case, but nothing else is adding up.

“Did you come from the sky?” Madi asks abruptly, turning to him. Bellamy nods. “How long ago?”

“Just this morning,” he replies, and Madi sits against his wall and tucks her legs under her. “We had been up there for six years and today we got to come back.”

“And you got captured.”

Bellamy nods, letting air out through his teeth, “I did. Just my luck, really,” Madi giggles and he grins. It’s been a long time since he’s made a little kid laugh, “I have had some pretty unfortunate things happen to me.”

Madi nods. “So has my mom.”

Bellamy raises a brow. “Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah, all the time. She’s kinda clumsy most of the time except when she’s shooting. She said that someone taught her a long time ago.”

Bellamy’s heart pangs. He thinks of Clarke. It’s not uncommon for something to bring her back to his mind. She’s more of a memory at this point, but every time he remembers something about her a cold fist wraps around his heart, reminding him of what he did all of those years ago. He left her here. It still hurts. It’s gotten easier as the years have gone by but he’ll never forget the feelings he has associated with her. Pain, heartbreak, a bit of love, if he’s being honest. He never let himself fully dissect what that love exactly was; it was too painful to do so after he left her here. “I taught someone to shoot a while ago,” he tells Madi and she looks at him thoughtfully. “I haven’t seen them in a very long time.”

“Where are they?” Madi asks, holding his gaze, but he only shrugs. Bellamy finally drops his gaze and looks at his boots.

“I don’t know. I think they’re dead,” he says, chewing on the inside of his cheek, “but I’m not sure.”

Madi sighs. “Maybe they’re not.” Bellamy lets out a bark of cold laughter because he knows deep in his heart she is. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. She would’ve contacted them, would have found the bunker. He doesn’t even know how she would have survived. For a while he held out hope, kept thinking that one day she’d radio and he’d feel a bit more at peace. But she never did. “Maybe they’re in that bunker you were talking about.”

Bellamy shakes his head, running his hand over his jaw. “They aren’t.”

The two are quiet for a moment as Madi picks some dirt out of her boots. They hear voices from outside but it’s all shouting orders and yelling. It reminds him of the dropship, the first few days on the ground. The chaos. His unfortunate way of ruling. Whatever the hell we want.

“What’s in the bunker?”

Bellamy thinks for a moment and then, “so you didn’t come from the bunker.”

“I didn’t say that.”

He raises a teasing brow at her and her cheeks go a bit pink. “Gotcha.” His mind reels. If she didn’t come from the bunker, where did she come from? Maybe there are another bunker, another place where only a few people stayed during the storm. But, he pulls himself from his thoughts and shakes his head. “People. Lots of people. Twelve hundred people. There’s beds, and kitchens, and places to stay. Some people got lucky and got in and some didn’t.”

“Like you,” she observes and he shrugs.

“I chose to leave. I had to go help a friend and I wasn’t going to let C—them go alone.”

“Did you help the friend?”

Bellamy nods. “I did. She’s safe. Or, I think she’s safe. She was in space with me. I don’t know what happened to them after I got captured. They’re hopefully fine.”

Madi nods. “I wasn’t lucky either.” She doesn’t elaborate and he won’t push her. She doesn’t have to tell him anything about her life, even though he’s dying to know. He wants to know where she came from, and if she wasn’t in the bunker, where she was. How she survived. A tiny part of him wonders if it’s nightblood. If that’s how she made it through. Bellamy squashes it before he can really develop that idea. It’s almost too painful to think about. Besides, Clarke had untested nightblood. “What’s our plan?”

“Our plan?”

“For getting out of here?”

Bellamy nods and thinks. “I don’t know. Do you have any ideas?”

Madi studies the door for a moment and furrows her brows. “They only captured us because they want something.”

“Yeah,” he encourages.

“So they would have to come for us to get what they want.”

Bellamy nods again. “What do you think they want?” Kid could probably use some critical thinking skills.

“Information? Guns?”

“I think they have guns, Madi, I had one shoved against my head as I got dragged here.”

Madi rolls her eyes and huffs, “okay, so they don’t want guns. They probably want to know who we are.”

Bellamy nods, and they get to work on their plan.

* * *

 

Clarke cannot believe that she let herself get separated from Madi. The prisoners were all over the place the second they landed. They tore through the woods looking for anything of use to them. Unfortunately for the prisoners, Clarke and Madi had already cleared it in terms of usefulness. The pair had already backed the Rover up to the lab and hoped that they would move on from the area that they landed. They had too much hope, obviously, because next thing they knew they had been spotted. And then they had to run. And then she lost Madi in the run.

Her eyes dart through the familiar trees, searching for the girl. Anxiety pools in the pit of her stomach. They haven’t been separated from each other in years. Of course, they’ve always had those times where Clarke had to get away, had to be alone, but never for more than a couple hours. And never in serious danger. She walks carefully through the woods, looking and listening for any sign of life that isn’t animal. Spending six years on the ground with nothing but a few weapons and her senses really teach you a few things about nature.

She chews on her lip anxiously. Deep down Clarke knows what happened. The prisoners probably got Madi and are holding her somewhere. She knows that, she just does not want to believe it. Madi knows their hiding places, the nooks and crannies of the green spot. If she’s not there, that means she’s been captured. That means Clarke’s gonna have to go in and try to negotiate, give them whatever they need or want. She’ll have to trick them. She can never catch a break. She’s had six years of peace and then in the span of one day things go back to the way they were.

Clarke moves silently through the woods, her gun heaved up on her shoulder. She’s turned around in the forest. The ship landing confused her sense of direction and she needs to find her bearings so she doesn’t continue to get lost. So, she scales a tree, just trying to see above the tree line to find the lab. If she finds the lab, she knows which direction to go.

But instead of seeing the lab, she sees a trail of ash and destruction. Clarke raises a brow in spite of herself. The prisoner ship is definitely in the opposite direction. She turns to confirm and nods, her eyes narrowing at the line that has destroyed the tree top.

And then she nods, making her decision. Clarke treks through the woods, and the wreckage, to get to the ship. It really left a huge path of destruction in its wake and she wonders how someone managed to fuck up a landing _that badly_.

Clarke studies the ship, her eyes searching for something, anything to tell her what it is. It’s still smoking, still etched into the ground from its landing. She doesn’t know if it’s a piece of the prisoner ship, or something that’s just fallen from the sky. That’s happened a lot in the last year. Things just falling. She’s always gone to inspect them, but it’s never been anything useful to her.

She hears voices from around the other side of the ship and hunkers down into the ground, her gun ready just in case. Clarke hears male and female voices and a hint of laughter and her brows come together. It’s been a very long time since she’s seen another human besides Madi. She hasn’t heard a different voice in six years.

The only reason she hesitates when she starts to leave is because she realizes that she recognizes the voices. Clarke stands slowly, shuffling behind the trees to watch for a moment. Her heart pounds out of her chest and it takes her a moment to catch her breath. It’s been so _long_. But it worked! They made it! She’d thought about this moment every day for the last six years but can’t bring herself to move. What if they don’t remember her? What if they don’t want her?

Clarke swallows thickly and shakes her head. She let them go up in space without her for a reason. So that they would live. They would want to know that she’s alive. Bellamy would want to know she’s alive. Something pangs in her chest. She’s going to see Bellamy today. The person she’s so longed to see all of these years, and he’s here. He’s right by that ship.

That’s the thought that gives her enough strength to move. Clarke clutches her rifle to her chest and steps out from behind the trees, slowly making the walk through the grass. She’s traced this green spot for years but it feels like she’s seeing it in a new light. She’s careful as she steps through the brush, avoiding getting tangled on anything. And then she trips, falling onto the ground. Damn tree roots. If Madi could see her right now…

Clarke groans and starts to stand, just as she hears her name. “Clarke?” Her head shoots up and finds the owner of the voice. Raven. Raven!

Another head turns as she stands all the way up and Monty gets to her first, barreling into her with a force she didn’t know he had. She lets out a shaky laugh as Monty laughs loudly, holding her tightly. Raven gets to her next her arms going around both her and Monty and Clarke’s crying because they’re alive! They didn’t blow up!

Monty finally releases her but Raven doesn’t let go, holding on for several more seconds. Monty wipes his face and Clarke sniffles as she looks up to Murphy just staring in shock.

He finally points at her and goes, “are you _fucking_ with me? You survived?” But he’s grinning and Clarke knows it’s not malicious. Or, she hopes it’s not malicious.

“Unfortunately I did,” Clarke says, a watery laugh falling from her as Murphy lumbers forward and gives her a tight side hug. She can’t help but feel a little bit shocked.

“Unbelievable. Only you could survive the end of the fucking world,” Clarke laughs but her eyes are searching the group, searching for the familiar gait, the unruly hair. She doesn’t see it and her smile falters, as does her heart. She sees Harper running towards her and Emori and Echo hanging back, but no Bellamy. Harper crashes into her with a laugh and Clarke grins, but she keeps searching. But he’s not there. It’s as simple as that. Something must have happened. Her heart stutters as Harper pulls back and Clarke forces another smile. Inside, her mind is reeling, trying to understand what could have happened.

“How did you—” Raven starts and stops, looking at Clarke surveying the area. She’s quiet for a second, but Murphy’s voice fills the void. He can’t be gone. No. Clarke refuses to believe it.

“Blake’s gonna lose it when he sees her,” and her head spins to him as Emori gives her a smile.

“What?” She knows her eyes are wide, full of shock and hope and something else she can’t place. There’s a weird feeling in the pit of her stomach. Something like butterflies.

“He’s alive,” Murphy says, “we just don’t know where he is.”

Clarke tips her head, trying to push back everything she’s ever felt for Bellamy, but it’s no use. Six years of emotions are finally getting to see the light. She’s quiet for a moment as she grasps what’s going on. He’s alive. He’s just not here. “Where is he?”

Monty shrugs. “No idea. When we landed he went off to find water and didn’t come back.”

Clarke groans, rubbing her temples. Too much to think about, too many feelings to process. And then she nods, opening her eyes. “The prisoner ship landed yesterday. We’d been running from it and—”

“We?”

“Me and Madi,” Clarke waves them off, and tries to continue, but their puzzled faces pull her to a stop. “It’s a long story. I found her two years in hiding in a bunker and I couldn’t leave her there. We’ve been together ever since. She’s ten,” Clarke adds and they nod slowly, “anyways, we had been running from it and got separated and she wasn’t at our usual hiding spots, so I’m thinking she got captured. That’s probably where he is.”

“Then how do we get them?” A voice says and Clarke turns to find Echo and she bites her tongue to keep from saying anything. Clarke doesn’t know how she feels about Echo. The last time they interacted Echo nearly ruined her life while simultaneously saved her life. There’s a lot of history there.

The group is quiet for a second and Clarke tries to avoid the blood pounding in her ears. He’s alive. Bellamy’s alive. “Show us where the ship is,” Emori says and Clarke nods.

“Lead the way,” Monty agrees.

Clarke nods again, and then looks back at their still smoking ship. It’s kind of a piece of junk. It’s a miracle it made it to the ground in one piece. She chews her lip. “Is there anything you need from in the ship? If the prisoners find it they’ll ransack it, so take what’s yours.” The group in front of her nods and she watches as they scurry to and from their ship, pulling a few things from it. They shove various things into backpacks, from clothing to pieces of paper and Clarke chews her lip again.

Murphy tosses a backpack to her. “If you’re alive you have to help.” She makes a face and he grins. “I don’t make the rules.”

“Who makes the rules?” Clarke asks curiously as she pulls it onto her back.

“I do,” Raven says, stepping to stand by Clarke. “Blake says he makes the rules but we all know I do.”

Clarke nods and tries to swallow the lump in her throat. Things have changed quite a bit in six years. But she pushes it down and nods to the ground in front of her. “I know where you can put your stuff. Let’s go.”

Clarke walks quietly in front of the group, lost in her thoughts. She hears quiet voices from behind her but doesn’t care to listen. She feels out of place. They’ve developed this friendship, more like a family, the last few years and she wasn’t part of it. Sure, she had Madi. But sometimes having a ten-year-old as your best friend and daughter can get really tiring. She loves Madi, she does. Sometimes Clarke just wished that she had some adult interaction.

She doesn’t notice Monty falling into step next to her until his shoe crunches a fallen branch. Monty gives her a smile, but they don’t talk for a little. Other than Bellamy, she thinks that Monty and Raven are the ones she missed the most. Monty always had a way of making her feel better, making sure she ate enough or wasn’t too hard on herself. “What happened to you?” Monty finally asks and she sighs, not prepared to answer the question.

Clarke swallows thickly. “The day that you left, the dish had to be manually aligned. That’s why I didn’t make it,” Clarke blinks a few times. “I’m sorry. It was a hard day. I don’t remember a lot.”

“I’m sorry,” Monty says quickly, “you don’t have to say anything.”

Clarke shakes her head. “It’s okay. I have to at some point.” She sighs again. “My helmet cracked on the way back and I barely made it to the lab before the wave hit. I was inside thankfully, but it was still a hit. I don’t know how long I was out until I woke up, but the nightblood worked. It took six months for all of the radiation lesions to go away, but they eventually went away.”

Monty nods slowly, continuing to follow Clarke as she leads them to her hut. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Leaving you. None of us wanted to.”

Clarke shrugs, turning to face him as they walk. “It’s okay. Really. I know there was no other choice and if you had waited none of you would have gotten off of the ground and we all would have died.”

“Still didn’t feel good. Still doesn’t. Seeing you alive helps but it was still hard. Bellamy nearly threw himself into space, more than once.”

Clarke tries to give him a smile, but her heart feels like it’s in her throat. She manages to force out a sentence, “really, Monty. It’s okay. I would much rather know that you were alive now as opposed to dead six years ago.” Monty nods and they fall into step again. Clarke chews on her lip and repeats Monty’s words in her head. He couldn’t have done that, that would have been so stupid. Then again, Bellamy always made rash decisions based on his heart. She hoped that her words to him about using his head eventually got through to him. The group behind her stops as Clarke rounds the trees to her hut.

Everyone goes quiet for a moment before Raven speaks up. “Where did you find this?”

“I built it,” Clarke says, shrugging. She continues to walk towards it as the group behind her stares at it.

“Gonna have a damn stroke,” Murphy says under his breath and Clarke is puzzled, but doesn’t ask questions. “Why’d you build it?”

Clarke leads them in and watches as they look around, examining every inch of where she lives. “I had to. I couldn’t stay in the lab after I found Madi and we didn’t want to be inside anymore.” Raven nods and plops her bag down, turning to Clarke. She raises a brow.

“What’s the plan?”

“I thought you made the plans,” Clarke points out, chewing on the inside of her lip.

Raven shrugs. “I don’t know the ground like the back of my hand like you do.” Clarke nods and then nods again.

“Okay. I have an idea. It’s a stupid one, but it’s an idea.”

Murphy blows air out of his mouth. “Haven’t changed a bit, Griffin.” 

* * *

 

Bellamy and Madi listen as the voices outside of the cell stop and he gives her a curt nod. Now or never. They stand in the middle of the room and they haphazardly placed the zip ties back around their wrists to give the illusion that they were still tied up.

The men unlock the cell and pull the door open before marching in. Two of them. Bellamy can take two of them, as long as Madi can get away. They look between their prisoners and then nod, taking Bellamy roughly by the arm. He glances behind and finds that Madi’s being dragged behind him and he growls. “Be careful with her,” he spits, but they don’t listen, and instead give him a sharp jab in the ribs. He clenches his jaw and lets himself get led to down another hallway. And then—

Bellamy breaks his zip ties again, jamming his elbow into his captors side. The second guard drops Madi quickly and advances on Bellamy. The other recovers quicker than Bellamy would have liked and so now he’s stuck dodging both of them. He ducks to avoid getting punched and uses his knee the best he can on one of the guards.

And then, there’s a loud clanging sound and the first guard falls to the floor. Bellamy risks a glance up and almost laughs. Madi is holding a large metal pipe. The guard has a welt the size of an apple on his head. Bellamy’s laugh dies in his throat when the second guard turns and advances on Madi. She screams and ducks under his arms and Bellamy takes his chance, punching him squarely in the jaw when he turns around. He can’t get a second punch in fast enough and then _he’s_ been punched, and his vision swims for a moment. He feels blood start to rush from his nose but he doesn’t think it’s broken.

Bellamy blinks and punches again as Madi brings her pipe down on the man’s shoulder. He’s able to get one more good punch in and the second guard falls too. He turns to Madi and takes a breath. “We need to go,” he says quickly, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “Right now.”

“Which way?” She replies, picking up the guard’s gun. Her eyes are wide with fear but he doesn’t have time to stop and see if she’s okay. They have to get out of here.

Then the gunfire starts some direction behind him and he dips down and picks up the second gun. “Not that way!”

So they start to sprint down the corridors, turning every chance they get, but it’s clear neither knows where they are. They reach a split at one point and take a chance and go right. Bellamy’s legs hurt and his nose is still bleeding but he has to get out of here. He also can’t let a ten-year-old get trapped here.

By some miracle, they see a door that must lead to the outside. They bust through the doors quickly and instantly have to drop to the ground so they aren’t seen. There are only a couple of prisoners in this area. The gunfire still goes on around the other side of the ship and Bellamy studies them quickly. These are definitely humans. Not grounders.

Bellamy nods a bit at Madi and they stand quickly, bolting to the treeline. They’re almost to the edge of it when they get seen, and they continue to race as fast as they can. And then there are people following them and Bellamy wants to curse because he has no idea where he is.

But Madi obviously does. She pushes in front of him and he has no choice but to follow her. They zigzag through trees, dodging the few bullets that pass them. Then, Madi hops into a thick bush and Bellamy goes too.

“Shh!” She hisses, covering her mouth to block the sounds. The two wait in silence for a little bit and Bellamy can’t help but wonder where the hell this came from. He hopes that this bush can conceal both of them. He glances at Madi to find her bleeding from the run here, from smashing into trees. Bellamy realizes with a start that her blood is black. He blinks a few times and goes to ask about it when the footsteps approach and his eyes widen. He refuses to breathe. If they’re found here then they’re surely get shot. The footsteps continue running forward, shouting about how they went this way.

Bellamy refuses to move for several more minutes until they hear a different set of voices. He recognizes these.

“What if they’re not there?”

“They’re either in there or they’re dead. Those are the only two options I can see.”

Bellamy hops out of the brush quickly, and then there are four guns being pointed at him.  He sees Madi jump out of the brush from the corner of his eye. “What the _fuck_ , guys?”

And Madi shouts at the same time, “who are you!” He can’t help but step in front of the girl. Just in case.

“This must be Madi.” Bellamy takes in the sight in front of him. Murphy, Raven, Monty and Harper, all holding guns. Where did they get guns? They look between Madi and Bellamy with shock evident on their faces. Where are the rest of his friends?

Bellamy cocks a brow, looking between Murphy and Madi, who still has her eyes narrowed. “How do you know Madi?”

“The better question is how do _you_ know Madi?”

Bellamy throws his hands up, “we were in a cell together. We’re looking for her mom—”

“Her mom?” Murphy’s eyes go a bit wide. “You don’t know? Her _mom_ is—”

And then there’s another round of gunfire and the group has no choice but to start running.

Can never catch a damn break. 

* * *

 

She supposes that going guns-a-blazin’ into the ship was a good idea at first, but then as soon as they got inside it was a really bad one. They were lost nearly instantly but they were able to lose the people following them. At some point, she knows they passed two guards out cold on the ground. A metal pipe was not far from their heads, and their guns were taken.

Clarke has to believe that that was Madi’s doing, that she somehow escaped and used whatever she could to get out. Thinking of the alternative hurts.

So Clarke, Emori, and Echo hurry through the woods to get back to Clarke’s hut. Emori keeps glancing behind them anxiously as if they’re still following. Clarke swears they lost them. The girls went the roundabout way to avoid them, and she thinks that they’ve been lucky.

The clearing gets close and Clarke lets out a sigh of relief as they turn.

She sees Madi first and instantly rushes towards her. She crouches to Madi’s height and pulls her face into her hands, inspecting for injuries. Clarke feels the worry seep out of her the more she looks because she’s fine. It doesn’t look like anything happened. She has a few tiny cuts on her face but she’s okay. Clarke pulls Madi into a hug and the little girl’s arms tighten around her back. “Scared the hell out of me, Madi. Don’t do that again.”

Clarke pulls back and expects to find Madi to be upset, but she’s smiling. “I had some help.”

Clarke’s brows come together. “You had help? What do you mean you had—”

But her voice falters and her lips part as she stares behind Madi. Clarke feels like she can’t breathe. Because Bellamy Blake’s standing behind Madi. He looks just as shocked as she feels. She drinks him in, from the familiar mess of curls to the unfamiliar scruff he has across his jaw. He has dried blood on and around his nose. The world melts away as Clarke finally stands from Madi’s height. She can’t tear her eyes away from him and slowly steps closer. Bellamy looks like he can’t believe it. Clarke doesn’t know if she can.

She finally comes to stand in front of him and he still doesn’t look like he believes it. Clarke swallows thickly, her heart trying to beat out of her chest. Her stomach is in her throat and her heart is clenched in a knot. Bellamy’s eyes finally swing to hers after looking down the rest of her and his hands raise slowly. They cup her cheeks and Clarke’s eyes close a bit at the contact. Bellamy’s fingers brush against her skin and her eyes pop open. “Are you real?” He finally whispers and Clarke nods, still captivated by him.

“I am. I’m real.” And then he laughs a bit and she swears her worries disappear in an instant. His arms surge around her tightly, winding around her shoulders. Her fingers clasp desperately behind his back, anchoring him to her and to the ground. Clarke breathes him in, nosing into his shoulder as she goes. He’s real. He’s alive. Bellamy’s alive.

Neither of them pull back for what seems like ages until someone tugs on Clarke’s shirt. She blinks and almost begrudgingly extracts herself from Bellamy to find Madi staring. “You didn’t say he had a beard.”

Clarke lets out a shaky breath and feels her cheeks heat up. “ _Madi_.”

“You didn’t! Out of all of the stories you couldn’t tell me he had a—”

She’s positive her face is red and she gives Madi a stern look and the girl quiets, but she’s still grinning. Clarke finally looks around and finds that everyone is gone, back into her hut or looking their surroundings. Echo hangs back a bit, looking at her curiously, but she doesn’t say anything.

“She’s got spunk,” Bellamy says. “I knew she reminded me of someone.”

Clarke nods. “We’ve picked up on each other’s habits.” And then Madi’s tugging her away to talk about something and Clarke sighs in relief. He’s alive.

* * *

 

Bellamy can’t believe it. After six years, six years, of hoping, and praying, and eventually giving up, Clarke’s alive. Six years of stomach-eating guilt. She’s alive and has an adopted daughter. It’s definitely not something he expected, but he can’t say he’s surprised. She must have been longing for human interaction, and Madi must have felt the same way.

Bellamy’s watching her when Madi plops down next to him. “Hey, kid.” He says gruffly, swinging his eyes from Clarke. She hands him a rag to wipe the blood off of his face that’s still there. He nods his thanks to her and gets to work.

Madi tips her head in a nod and is quiet for a moment, going to watch Clarke again. “She radioed every day.”

“Yeah?” He raises a brow. This is news to him. Their radios never worked. The storm was too bad on earth and they were never able to make any contact.

“Every morning. Sometimes I’d be awake when she did it. She always talked to you.”

“To me?”

Madi nods, playing with the tips of her hair. “Sometimes she’d say something to Raven or Monty but it always came back to you.”

“We never got them,” he croaks, the air leaving his lungs. Every day. She called them, called him, every day. He never knew. “I wish we would have.”

Madi nods. “She didn’t know. She said she missed all of you but I could tell she missed you the most.” Bellamy can’t answer, he doesn’t know what to say. How is he supposed to respond to that? His throat has closed up. He’ll admit that while he’s thrilled that she’s alive, it has been a bit of a shock. Bellamy doesn’t know how to act, how to talk to her. Everything was so easy six years ago, and now everything is just discombobulated.

“Madi! Time for bed,” Clarke calls and comes over to retrieve her.

“Night, Bellamy,” Madi says, waving goodnight and Bellamy smiles a bit.

He waves back at her, “night, Madi.” Bellamy watches as Clarke ushers Madi into their hut and his eyes linger long after the door shuts. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to stop looking.

Someone squats down next to him and he knows who it is, but he doesn’t turn. “You should talk to her,” Echo finally says, and he jerks his head towards Echo. “I know you want to.”

“I wouldn’t know what to say,” he says honestly and she shrugs. He wipes a bit more blood from his face before setting down the rag.

“You always know what to say,” she replies before squeezing his hand tightly and standing up, brushing her pants off. “Talk to her.”

Bellamy nods and watches her go before turning back to face the fire that Clarke and Madi made earlier. He watches the flames build, going higher and higher before they turn into sparks. He’s still staring at it as his friends retire to bed under the canopy Clarke has. He hears them whispering like schoolchildren for a while, but they all eventually drop off. He can’t bring himself to sleep yet. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to sleep.

The door to the hut closes quietly and he turns his head to see Clarke closing it slowly. She turns and notices he’s still awake and starts, but doesn’t say anything as she crosses to him. She watches the fire too, the dying flames and the smoking embers. Finally, she speaks up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“A walk?”

“Have you forgotten what a walk was after all of those years in space?” Bellamy makes a face and stands, popping his back as he goes.

“Where are we going?”

She shrugs. “I dunno.” But he follows her, much like he did all of those years ago. It’s quiet as they walk and Bellamy finds himself feeling a bit awkward. It used to be so easy, they could walk for hours and not say a word. Now, it’s like one of them is waiting for something to be said. Bated breath, no words.

They find their way to a slow moving stream and Bellamy watches it for a moment, kicking a rock in and watching the ripples.

“I figured we could go to the bunker tomorrow,” Clarke finally says and he looks up to find her sitting on a large rock.

“It’s not open?”

She shakes her head, looking at the stream. She chews on her lip. “I’ve been moving boulders around for years but I can’t get them all off of the door. I don’t even know if they know it’s safe to come up. If they’re alive.” Bellamy nods and slowly crosses to lean against the rock, trying not to stare at her. He just can’t believe she’s here. She cut her hair. She has a daughter. She has the Rover. His Rover.

“They probably don’t,” he mutters, crossing his arms. They’re quiet for another few minutes, listening to the stream trickle down the rocks. “I’m sorry we left you.”

Clarke shakes her head. “It’s okay. You had to.”

“I made the choice and I’m sorry.”

She sighs. “I knew it would come to this. You made the choice because the rest of you had to get off of the ground. It made sense. It was the only way.” The only choice. He’s replayed that moment in his head thousands of times. One of their last interactions and it makes him want to throw up. He could have tried harder.

“We both could have gone to fix the dish.”

The blonde shakes her head. “You know that wouldn’t have been a good idea. One of us would have died and the other would have been miserable for the rest of our lives.” He decides not to tell her that he _was_ miserable for an incredibly long amount of time. But he nods. He feels the guilt still eating away at him. She’s been alive this whole time. She could have been up there with them.

“I still feel awful about it.”

“Don’t,” she replies sharply, “what’s done is done. It’s in the past. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

They’re quiet again and Bellamy swallows, searching for something to talk about, anything to keep hearing her voice. “How’d you find Madi?” She stiffens and he tries to retract his statement. “Sorry—if you don’t want to talk—”

“It’s fine,” she sighs, shaking her head. “It’s just been us for so long. It’s weird telling it to someone else.” He tries not to feel like it’s weird being around her again, but it is. “I found her in a bunker about four years back. She was six. Survived on her own for two years.

“Two years? She was four when Praimfaya hit?”

Clarke nods, picking some mud out of her boots. He can’t help but remember that Madi did the same thing earlier. “Four. I guess her parents knew they wouldn’t survive and tried to do what they could to keep her alive. Stocked the bunker. Put her in it, and followed. They died pretty soon after. They weren’t nightbloods,” she says and finally he gets his answer as to how she survived, “so it didn’t work. Madi survived. I was going around trying to find Polis when I ran over the bunker hatch with the Rover and checked to see what it was. Madi was in there. It took a really long time to coax her out. She was underfed and scared and didn’t speak much English so it took a while for her to trust me. We’ve been together ever since. I would say she’s like my sister but it’s more like she’s my daughter. I wouldn’t have made it without her.”

Bellamy’s quiet as he digests her story. He supposes that maybe in this one case, it’s good Clarke was here. Good that she found her. “Wouldn’t have made it?”

Clarke visibly grimaces and he tries to apologize but she talks, wringing her fingers together. “Two years is a long time to be alone,” she finally whispers, looking at her boots and he understands. “There was a point when I didn’t really want to keep going. The next day I found Madi. She was literally sent from above.”

Bellamy nods again and looks at her closely. She doesn’t have the harsh look of hard decisions etched into her face anymore, doesn’t have the eyes of a killer. Because she isn’t. She’s had six years of peace and healing.

Bellamy turns so he’s sitting on the rock and she scoots to give him room. They’re quiet again as Bellamy watches the stars. They’re much better from down here. Even better now that he’s on the ground and he can breathe without feeling like he’s going to die.

“Madi said you radioed,” he murmurs and she swallows, “every day.”

“I did,” Clarke replies, but she won’t look at him, “it kept me sane. I didn’t know if you got them. The radio frequency was all fucked up. Sometimes I worried it was just off and I was being stupid.”

Bellamy grins a bit, but then it falls. “We didn’t get them. I wish we had but we didn’t. I was so—” Guilty? Angry? Distraught? All of the above. But, he says, “worried. The whole time. I couldn’t even look at myself for the first year.”

“Monty said you tried to eject yourself from the Ark,” she whispers quietly, as if she doesn’t want to know the answer. He immediately thinks back to the day that they found him staring at the floater, his hands shaking against the door. It took them a very long time to get him away from the door. They didn’t leave him alone for months after.

He looks at his hands. “I wasn’t going to go through with it ever. I just thought that if I could get to the ground I could stop feeling so guilty.”

“You didn’t stop feeling guilty,” she states and he nods. He wonders if she can still read him as well as she could six years ago.

“You were dead, Clarke,” he huffs. “You were dead for six years and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt so _guilty_ the whole time. And now you’re here and I shouldn’t feel guilty anymore, but I do.”

“Bellamy,” she sighs and his eyes close momentarily, “you have no reason to be guilty anymore. I’m alive. I’m healthy. We’re all on the ground again.” He nods, but it still eats away at his insides. “I don’t blame you. I never did.” Bellamy’s eyes finally find hers and he finds nothing but forgiveness in them. “I forgave you for it almost as soon as it happened.”

He feels a bit of guilt edge from him and a bit of relief fill him. Bellamy tips his head into a nod and takes a breath. “I missed you, Clarke.”

The ends of her lips lift into a little smile. “I missed you too, Bellamy.” He snakes his arm across her shoulder and pulls her in for another hug. Hers crosses across his back and they stay like that for several seconds. The stream moves gently and the insects buzz but neither of them move. He doesn’t want to ever let her out of his sight again.

“You’re not allowed to die on me again, Princess,” Bellamy murmurs, a hint of teasing in his voice.

Clarke laughs. “I’ll try my best.” He knocks his shoulder against hers and rolls his eyes. They’ll be okay.


End file.
